Kaiser Wilhelm II’s speech to a German contingent of the international expedition corps, sent to quell the so-called ‘Boxer Rebellion’ in 1900, is today remembered chiefly as an example of his penchant for boastful, sabre-rattling rhetoric that included a strange comparison of his soldiers with the ‘Huns under Attila’. According to some accounts, this comparison was the source for the stigmatizing label Hun(s) for Germans in British and US war propaganda in WW1 and WW2, which has survived in popular memory and continues to be used, though mainly in ironical senses, by British and German media to this day. This paper charts the history of the Germans-as-Huns analogy and argues first, that the usage data render highly improbable any ‘model’ function of Wilhelm’s speech for post-1914 uses. Furthermore, present-day uses presuppose an awareness of the WW1 and WW2 meaning on the part of readers, which serves as a platform for echoic allusions. In the British media these allusions often lead to the ironical (including self-ironical) subversion of preceding uses, while in German public discourse they focus more on historical commemoration and comparison.

中文翻译：

---

臭名昭著的失态的来世

德皇威廉二世在 1900 年被派往平息所谓的“义和团叛乱”的国际远征军德国特遣队发表的讲话，今天被人们主要记住，这是他喜欢吹嘘、剑拔弩张的言论的一个例子，其中包括一个奇怪的比较他的士兵与“阿提拉下的匈奴人”。根据一些记载，这种比较是第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战期间英国和美国战争宣传中德国人污名化标签匈奴的来源，该标签在大众记忆中幸存下来，并继续被使用，尽管主要是在讽刺意义上，直到今天，英国和德国媒体。本文描绘了德国人作为匈奴人的类比的历史，并首先论证了使用数据使得威廉的演讲在 1914 年之后使用的任何“模型”功能极不可能。此外，当今使用的前提是读者对一战和二战的意义有所了解，这是回声典故的平台。在英国媒体中，这些典故往往导致对先前用法的讽刺（包括自我讽刺）颠覆，而在德国公共话语中，它们更侧重于历史的纪念和比较。